of Nienna's blood. 'But don't worry. Don't panic, little Myriam; I am no danger to you. I value the Blacklipper contacts and their great wealth more than I value killing you in your sleep.' He glanced at Nienna. 'Or tasting her foul juice.'
Styx lowered his hands, and walked past Myriam and the cowering form of Nienna; he disappeared into the woodland, and Myriam released a long breath. She glanced at Jex.
'Not such a good idea,' said Jex, eyes fixed on Myriam.
'You think I don't know that? You think I'm a village idiot?'
'No,' said the tribesman, carefully. 'But I do think you should have let him have his fun with the girl; it would have kept him happy, not harmed her too much, and as he says – it would have tamed her spirit just a little.' He shrugged. 'Now you have to watch your back. From both fucking directions.'
'You can watch it as well,' smiled Myriam.
Jex did not return the smile. 'Some things in life, we do alone,' he said, and moved off through the trees.
Myriam finally lowered her bow, and placed the arrow in her sheath. Nienna moved around to face Myriam, and her hands were shaking. She looked up, and at first Myriam wouldn't meet her gaze.
Then their eyes locked, and Myriam studied the tall girl before her. She was pretty, with a rounded and slightly plump face. Her hair was a luscious brown down to her shoulders, and her eyes bright green, dazzling with youth and vitality. For a long moment Myriam hated her, despised her, was jealous to an insane degree of her youth, and beauty, and strength, and health, whilst she was slowly being eaten from the inside out, turning into a husk of degenerative cells. Hate flooded Myriam, fuelled by envy, and she wanted to smash Nienna's face open with a rock; split her head and watch the brains come spilling out. But Myriam breathed deeply, controlled herself, and fought the evil in her veins, in her soul. She forced a smile to her face.
'Thank you,' said Nienna.
'Don't be too grateful,' grunted Myriam. 'You're still my prisoner… until the mighty Kell arrives, and shows us a way through the mountains.'
'Still – Styx would have…' she shuddered.
Myriam smiled. 'Don't think about it. He's a bad man, aye, but at least it's nothing personal. He hates all women. Come to think of it, he hates all men.' Myriam turned, and started back through the trees with Nienna close behind. Nienna was still shivering.
'Why do you travel with such hateful creatures?' said Nienna, her voice low, almost conspiratorial. 'It must darken your soul to see such evil at every turn. To witness such horror, and do nothing to halt it.'
Myriam stopped, suddenly, and Nienna almost crashed into her. 'I saved you, didn't I, little Nienna?' Her tone was mocking, her eyes flashing angry. 'Darken my soul? Child, you know nothing of me, or my life, of my horrors and pain and suffering. Don't think because of one little moment, one tiny lapse in my self-control that I'm suddenly a mother figure. You're here for a reason, and that's to draw Kell. That's why I helped you. I care nothing for your suffering. In fact, I wish I'd let Styx rape you – he was right. It would have taught you to shut your bastard mouth.'
She stalked off ahead, leaving a confused and now terrified Nienna behind. Nienna trotted after her, tears on her cheeks, and filled with a complete and devastating misery.
Kell managed an hour's sleep. In it, he dreamed. He dreamed of Ilanna, his axe; he dreamed of murder; he dreamed of the Days of Blood. He stood, muscles bulging, tensed as if pumped on drugs and violence, and his whole body quivered, and his mind flitted and could not settle on a single thought, like some butterfly caught in a raging storm. Blood smeared his face and arms and he glanced down, and Kell was naked, naked and proud and bulging with sexual arousal. His entire body was smeared with blood, and blue and green whorls of paint which were intricately complex and he frowned for he did not remember being painted, or tattooed, but then they did not matter for they were an irrelevancy… Kell leapt down from the stone wall and stood in the street, Ilanna in his hands, a snarl on his face, and refugees were streaming past him, sobbing, faces blackened with soot as behind the city burned, huge towers of fire screaming up into the skies. Kell watched the men and women and children stream past him, and Ilanna said something in his mind with a soothing caress and she sang, and Kell twitched and a head rolled, and blood fountained and Kell moved and allowed the twitching body to spray lifeblood over the butterfly blades of the great axe…
'Ugh!' Kell sat up, shivering, and pain washed through him like honey through a sieve; slowly, an ooze, spreading gently through limbs and veins and muscles and organs and into… into his bones.
It's the poison, he told himself.
It's getting worse.
He pulled his cloak tightly about him. The wind howled. Kell licked his lips. What he'd give for a drink. Gods, he'd kill for a drink. And then he smiled, face black in the moonlight, eyes glittering like some dark devil's, and he remembered the unlabelled bottle of whiskey deep in the basket on Mary's back.
It was a matter of moments to get the bottle and retire back to the phantom warmth of his cloak; the wind stirred eerily through the trees. Kell pulled out the cork with his teeth and an odour of sour, cheap, nasty whiskey filled him. He did not care. He breathed in the scent like drugsmoke; he revelled in its base oil consistency, in its hints at raw energy and amateur production. This was a whiskey made by unskilled peasants. This was a whiskey in which Kell could identify, not like the rich honeyed slop the aristocracy of Saark's social circle enjoyed. This was fire water, and Kell drank it.
He took several gulps, and it burned his throat.
He took several more, and a haze filled his mind.
The pain of the poison left him.
And Kell slept, whiskey bottle cradled like a small, adopted child.
The moon was high in a cold, crystal sky. Nienna sat, wrapped in blankets, listening to the soft snoring of Myriam by her side. The woman turned in her sleep, stretching out long legs. For a moment – a fleeting moment – Nienna considered running. She had tried twice before; the second time, Myriam had caught her and explained, using the back of her hand, what she would do the next time Nienna ran. Now, Nienna slept with her ankles bound so tight her feet would be blue by morning. And anyway, she had seen Myriam operate her bow. She was a lethal, very deadly young woman… who could kill over great distance. It made Nienna shiver in horror and anticipation.
Nienna drifted in and out of sleep, as she had done since her kidnapping. Such a simple word, and yet it embodied day after day of a living hell. Riding in front of Styx, and then Jex, they had shared her burden, swapping her often so as not to tire the horses with extra weight; they had ridden north, fast, as if Myriam feared Kell would take up immediate chase. Nienna knew Saark wasn't going to take chase; she had watched him beaten and then stabbed with a long, sharp dagger. Even now, Nienna was sure Saark must be dead and she shuddered, on the edges of sleep, once again picturing the beating, hearing every crunch, every slap of impact in her nightmares. Even now, she could see the blade slide so easily into his soft flesh, and thought no, it cannot be, cannot be happening, cannot be true, but blood poured from Saark and it was true and Myriam had come to them and they had ridden away into the snow, without a backward glance…
Nienna thought back. Back to Kat. Katrina. Her friend. Now dead. Now a corpse, rotting in the cold bunkhouse where she'd been nailed to the wall by Styx's Wi dowmaker. Nienna thought about that weapon. Thought about it a lot. With a weapon like that, she could really even the odds – no matter that she was a thin, physically weak, and hardly able to lift a longsword. With a Wi dowmaker she could punch a hole through Styx's face and run for the woods…
No. She would have to kill all three if she expected to escape.
But Kell! Kell would come and rescue her! Surely?
Maybe Kell was dead, spoke a dark side of her soul. He went into battle with King Leanoric – against the albino army. Maybe now he was just another corpse on the battlefield, crows eating his eyes, rats gnawing his intestines. She shivered, and gritted her teeth. No! Kell was alive. She knew it. Knew it deep in her heart.
And if Kell was alive, then he would come for her.
Nienna drifted off into sleep; coldness ate the edges of her flesh where skin poked from behind the blankets. She snuggled down as far as she could go, and her eyes suddenly clicked open. What was it? What had woken her? She was instantly wide awake – totally awake – and adrenaline surged through her system.
Nienna sat up. Her eyes searched the darkness. She turned to her right, and looked down at Myriam; the lithe
